An early-season preview meet Friday at Vancouver Lake showed that the Columbia High girls cross country team is closing in on the Trico League’s elite program, Seton Catholic.
It’s very early in the season, so it’s a little premature to make rash predictions, but the Bruins’ girls program under Coach Michael Hannigan is trending in the right direction. The meet, the Clark County Jamboree, drew 15 teams of various enrollment levels, including four from the Class 1A Trico. No overall team scores were kept, as the races were divided by year in school.
Seton Catholic junior Alexis Leone, the two-time defending league and district champion, and the 2021 Class 1A state champion, paced the girls field at the jamboree. She registered the fastest time for girls of 11 minutes, 21 seconds for two miles. Seton won the 1A state title two seasons ago.
Columbia’s Ella Zimmerman paced the Bruins in 13:15, the 21st fastest time among females, including the open division, and eighth among seniors. Esther Kline was seventh in the junior race in 14 minutes for the Bruins.
When comparing times, Seton Catholic was the quickest team among the Trico, while Columbia was a close second. Seton Catholic has won the past two league meets with La Center placing second. Those schools flipped those spots the prior two seasons.
Columbia returns five runners from last year’s conference meet team, including Zimmerman, Kline, junior Leah Swanson, sophomore Damarys Alvarez, and junior Grace Bjelland-Lathim.
The Columbia boys were led at Friday’s meet by senior Camden Uffelman, who ran the two-mile race in 11:09. The top five finishers at the 2021 league meet for Columbia were underclassmen and three of those runners ran on Friday: Uffelman, Noah Slayton (11:37) and Garrett Koch (11:50). Rounding out the top five for the Bruins last week were junior Nathaniel Chambers (also 11:50) and junior Henry Wilson (12:20).
Trico boys supremacy figures to be between Seton Catholic, La Center and White Salmon. La Center has won the past three league titles; Columbia won three of four before them; and Seton performed the best among the three at last week’s jamboree. Columbia has finished either first or second at the conference championship seven of the past eight seasons.
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